Crossrail

[HSTEd]

Enjoy your rail fares going up even more then...

Also if someone is happy to pay more for a premium product what is it anyone's business if they do so? I also don't quite see how 1st/standard has anything to do with societies class system? Not everyone in first class is rich or upper class similarly not everyone in standard is poor or working class.

Im pretty sure that a rather large proportion of 1st class passengers these days are Railways staff or otherwise travelling on PRIV documentation.

 

[tbtc]

Well if there were 4 trains per hour to Cardiff via Bristol Parkway that would mean that only 12.5% of the trains would have the reduced capacity associated with 2+2 seating and a single first class vehicle which I estimate to reduce the capacity of the line by ~7-8% at most (Assuming no standing on the Cl395 derivative). Which considering these trains would not impinge on the 24tph currently planned for the route would not really effect capacity significantly anyway.

I don't think this massively reduces the capacity of the line and frankly if there is a scrum on the platform that means the platforms have been built with insufficient circulating area.

You could even make the platform edge doors opposite the first class carriage stay closed to prevent people boarding by accident.

EDIT:
It appears Crossrail is being built to allow 12 carriage trains even though it will only use 10 carriage ones in normal service, so perhaps the shop and first class vehicle would be on that end of the train and ten normal second class vehicles would be available for boarding.

The Liverpool Street - Totenham Court Road - Paddington stretch is going to be effectively a new Underground line, with up to 24 trains an hour (e.g. every two and a half minutes).

There's no time to be worrying about First Class, its going to be a question of how quickly people can get on/off.

 

[ainsworth74]

Im pretty sure that a rather large proportion of 1st class passengers these days are Railways staff or otherwise travelling on PRIV documentation.

I doubt that seeing as 1st Class PRIVs are like gold dust from what I've heard. Also I struggle to believe that those 390s/221s out of Euston or HSTs out of Paddington or HST/IC225s out of Kings Cross are full of railway staff and PRIV holders.

 

[jon0844]

Im pretty sure that a rather large proportion of 1st class passengers these days are Railways staff or otherwise travelling on PRIV documentation.

I do wonder if at weekends, DOO services should re-brand the first class compartments/carraiges as for being reserved for staff, off-duty cops and chavs.

It would be especially interesting to see how all three would communicate with each other.

 

[tbtc]

I doubt that seeing as 1st Class PRIVs are like gold dust from what I've heard

You are assuming, of course, that any rail staff in First are doing so with the correct paperwork (and no "nudge nudge, wink wink" with the Guard)

 

[ChrisCooper]

Another problem I'm surprised no-one has noticed yet is PEDs. These only work when you have one type of train. Long distance services, especially the sort of services some have mentioned, would want end doors, wheras the PEDs are going to be set up for 1/3 2/3 doors, or even more depending on the final design (most Crossrail concepts show 3 sets of doors per coach, in keeping with it being a metro type operation). There is also the issue of the high frequency ATO section. Again that works far better with just one type of train, each with near identical performance, and that includes dwell times.
The only way I can see longer distance services onto Crossrail working is if the line had been built 4 track, then the metro services could call at all stations and the long distance services could run fast through the core (with cross platform interchange so that passengers on the long distance services wishing to travel to the core station could do so very easily).

 

[jopsuk]

Aye, four track with Long Distance calling only at Liverpool Street and Paddington (though with platforms at all stations, to allow for emergencies) would have been "nice"- similarly, Thameslink would work far better as a four-track railway, seperating long distance and metro.

Surely though with clever/complex PED design, it would be possible to have one set of PEDs that line up and open for "metro" and one set for "long distance", with indicator systems to show which doors will open?

 

[Nym]

Heres an idea, these long distance services, lets terminate these in London, in a big station with loads of platforms and loads of facilities in it, and lets say, have the XR platforms underground next to it for the metro services???

 

[mr_jrt]

Wow - you tell all those people who live on the Aylesbury branch that they are pathetic and not worthy of a decent train to sit on all the way into work. They will love you. In fact I know from experience that these are well used durign the peaks and the thought of putting them onto a jubilee line train is just laughable really.

Though I guess it would free up platforms for all these extra trains you want into marylebone from the rest of the line.

thats if i read that right

...I suspect you haven't, no.

The Jubilee would only run to Stanmore and (ideally) West Ruislip, perhaps to Northolt Park instead, or at the very least, one of the Sudbury stations. It would in effect serve two Wembley stations, so the loss of the terminators at Wembley Park would be no great hardship.

Aylesbury would be served by two different Crossrail services:

• CR1 trains would start there, run all-stations to High Wycombe, then limited-stop to London.
• CR3 trains from Milton Keynes that would run all-stations to Moor Park then fast down the fast lines to HotH, then down the fast lines to the tunnel portal at Neasden (perhaps with underground platforms there for interchange).

 

[Minstral25]

Bear in mind that in the tunnels under London it is going to function as a quasi-tube line.

Can you imagine the scrums of passengers between Paddington/ Tottenham Court Road/ Liverpool Street (etc) worrying about not boarding the First Class section?

Longer distance services will use Crossrail in the future (once it is up and running as a "simple"/functional Shenfield/ Abbey Wood - Heathrow/ Maidstone service, nothing confusing, nothing complicated), in the way that the Thameslink core will shortly take services from places like Peterborough. But 140mph 395 equivalents? No chance...

Crossrail is deliberately a Metro train service and hence I don't get all these plans to go to long distance destinations. I doubt it will extend much beyond Abbey Wood and Shenfield to the East but it needs more destinations to the West (such as replacing the Heathrow Express) to avoid the terminators at Royal Oak - but I can't see it going much beyond the M25 of any route - wrong type of service

Crossrail links places in Central London where there are very high density of passengers. The aim is to remove some of the traffic overloading the Central Line and the Hammersmith and city/Circle/Metropolitan lines in central London.

Crossrail should have first class as it includes destinations that may get real first class passengers (Heathrow/Maidenhead/Brentwood) and this will be easy for passengers as it will line up neatly to the first class platform doors on the Central London stations which can thus be marked on the Platform. In a 10 coach train this would be a third of a coach with own doors at each end

Thameslink conversely is a Outer Suburban service with a few London stops - The route through the core is not a dense metro route nor is it likely to be as the Stations/Destinations are very different. Passenger wise it will become a Northern Route and a Southern Route which effectively terminate at Farringdon/City, with relatively few passengers (say 15%) going right through

 

[Bald Rick]

Crossrail should have first class as it includes destinations that may get real first class passengers (Heathrow/Maidenhead/Brentwood) and this will be easy for passengers as it will line up neatly to the first class platform doors on the Central London stations which can thus be marked on the Platform. In a 10 coach train this would be a third of a coach with own doors at each end.

All those first class passengers from Brentwood have had a disappointing journey these last 30 years or so.

There's no place for first on Crossrail, in the same way there's no place for first class on LOROL. FC passengers from Maindenhead etc will still be catered for by GW services to Paddington.

 

[Waverley125]

is it just me that thinks Crossrail probably doesn't go far enough? Surely the obvious places to terminate services are Reading, Heathrow, Windsor & Eton Central & Henley in the West, and Southend Victoria, Southminster, Gravesend Central & Ebbsfleet International in the East?

 

[Minstral25]

All those first class passengers from Brentwood have had a disappointing journey these last 30 years or so.

There's no place for first on Crossrail, in the same way there's no place for first class on LOROL. FC passengers from Maindenhead etc will still be catered for by GW services to Paddington.

Of course I forgot the main station now is Shenfield - I'm still remembering the service pattern when I used to live in the area 30 years ago! Almost all the locals used to start at Gidea Park (run by 306's)and the Southend Trains (307's if I remember right) called at Harold Wood and Brentwood plus Romford and Ilford.

Maidenhead is a different game though and should get 1st Class and also for Heathrow services so the City folk will use them and get some gas guzzlers off the road. Can't really imagine the stockbrokers of Maidenhead catching a train to Paddington to change the same train they could have caught all the way to their desks at Liverpool Street.

A small area at the very front and very back of a 10 coach unit shouldn't really be a big issue (not like the over provision on the Pendolinos) and can easily be signposted at stations, especially where there is platform doors. If someone gets on at the wrong point then they just have to walk through the open style trains.

 

[Tiny Tim]

"Crossrail is deliberately a Metro train service"

Exactly. The people who first started to plan Crossrail had, no doubt, the option to build a long distance, high speed link across London and chose not to. The only sensible way of combining the two modes would (as has already been pointed out) to have four tracks. It's easy to suggest this is a good idea on a forum like this, but we don't have to justify the colossal extra cost of this to the government/taxpayer. Crossrail is a relief tube line; Ambitions to turn it into anything else are misplaced. That's not to say that Crossrail isn't an important project, it just isn't what some people would like it to be.

 

[mr_jrt]

I'm inclined to disagree. Crossrail as a metro is a massive waste of the tunnel. Crossrail's point is to get as many passengers who would normally pile onto the tube at Paddington and Liverpool Street much closer to their destinations, relieving the tube network. How far out it goes is largely irrelevant, and it should go as far as it can manage.

The downside to this of course is that it prevents serving the metro stations properly. In an ideal world we'd be getting 6 tracks on both routes so proper metro services could operate, but seeing as we're not (which is a shame as it'd be relatively easy on the GW to Airport Junction), you have to cater for the markets that are already there - suburban on the GW and Metro on the GE.

I think you could have mixed the two quite happily through the core tunnel though - it's not too different from the Met fast lines and the slow line merging at Neasden...not to mention the junction at Baker St.!

Likewise, Thameslink's suburban nature limits the opportunities available for developing the metro service there as well as the capacity for the suburban services having to serve the metro stations - I have a pet project for using the freight lines to 6 track the MML to solve this.

 

[Eagle]

I think you could have mixed the two quite happily through the core tunnel though...

Not at the proposed frequencies you can't. You can't have a skip-stop service in the core else it'd bump into the train in front. Thameslink is kind of like this (albeit the core tunnel is much shorter).

 

[deltic]

With HEX loosing its track access rights in 2023 there is an argument that first class provision will be provided on Crossrail services into Heathrow. BAA is very keen on providing some sort of premium service otherwise they fear business travellers will revert to taxi

 

[Peter Mugridge]

There's no place for first on Crossrail, in the same way there's no place for first class on LOROL. FC passengers from Maindenhead etc will still be catered for by GW services to Paddington.

Agreed, and there is no first class on the Paris RER system, which is basically a series of Crossrail type routes - which incidentally serves both Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports.

There was first class there ( and on the Metro ), but it was abolished about 20 years ago.

 

[ChrisCooper]

Surely these same people who would be so put out by not having first class on Crossrail would be the same ones who currently happily catch the Underground to Paddington then connect with HEX or FGW Expresses. If they are that bothered about making the whole journey instead of just part surrounded by plebs then they will just change at Paddington as now. If HEX is withdrawn then surely the main importance is making sure that an express service is maintained. Again if the 15mins from Paddington to Heathrow surrounded by plebs will put them off, then the journey from the city to Paddington will be no better. If they use a taxi to get to Paddington at the moment so now have to mix with the great unwashed then they probably would probably find trains too common. What next, first class on the Underground?

 

[Tiny Tim]

Crossrail is planned to be, and will be built as a relief tube line. No amount of wishing will change that, although a big wodge of money might. Any offers?

 

[deltic]

Surely these same people who would be so put out by not having first class on Crossrail would be the same ones who currently happily catch the Underground to Paddington then connect with HEX or FGW Expresses. If they are that bothered about making the whole journey instead of just part surrounded by plebs then they will just change at Paddington as now. If HEX is withdrawn then surely the main importance is making sure that an express service is maintained. Again if the 15mins from Paddington to Heathrow surrounded by plebs will put them off, then the journey from the city to Paddington will be no better. If they use a taxi to get to Paddington at the moment so now have to mix with the great unwashed then they probably would probably find trains too common. What next, first class on the Underground?

If memory serves me right there will be no express service to Heathrow. The potential loss of revenue is therefore significant. the practicability of offering some sort of premium service on Crossrail probably cant be overcome but BAA will still try.

 

[jopsuk]

With HEX loosing its track access rights in 2023 there is an argument that first class provision will be provided on Crossrail services into Heathrow. BAA is very keen on providing some sort of premium service otherwise they fear business travellers will revert to taxi

Is that a definite, or is that just when the current Access Rights contract runs out?

 

[deltic]

Is that a definite, or is that just when the current Access Rights contract runs out?

Its when the current track access agreement runs out and the RUS assumes the paths are then reallocated to long distance services. I would have thought BAA would then ask ORR to judge how the paths are reallocated and bid for them for HEX services but others have told me HEX has no chance of getting them.

 

[mr_jrt]

Not at the proposed frequencies you can't. You can't have a skip-stop service in the core else it'd bump into the train in front. Thameslink is kind of like this (albeit the core tunnel is much shorter).

Apologies for the ambiguity...I meant 6 tracks or the planned 4 track skip-stop merging to two tracks at Royal Oak before all stations through the core tunnel. No different whatsoever from the Met having the fast lines merging with the semi-fast lines at Neasden - all just a matter of timetabling.

 

[Eagle]

Apologies for the ambiguity...I meant 6 tracks or the planned 4 track skip-stop merging to two tracks at Royal Oak before all stations through the core tunnel. No different whatsoever from the Met having the fast lines merging with the semi-fast lines at Neasden - all just a matter of timetabling.

Ah right. Pretty much exactly like Thameslink then.

 

[Nym]

Or just run XR pretty much like Thameslink with two branches on each side of the core, each providing 12tph?

 

[mr_jrt]

Or just run XR pretty much like Thameslink with two branches on each side of the core, each providing 12tph?

In a simplified world I'd have something along the lines of 6tph metro to Heathrow, 6tph suburban to Reading (or 3tph to Didcot/Newbury), 6tph metro to Aylesbury via High Wycombe, and 3tph to each of Oxford & Bicester, with each termination point getting an extra tph if they make it to 32tph in the core.

 

[Eagle]

...6tph metro to Aylesbury via High Wycombe...

Of course the Aylesbury-via-Wycombes will be extended to Milton Keynes by the time Crossrail opens.